Dawn M's Story

Dawn grew up feeling a quiet sense that something didn’t quite fit, but it wasn’t until a search for her family’s past that everything she thought she knew began to shift. In this episode, she shares what it’s like to uncover the truth later in life—and how she’s finding her way forward, one piece at a time.

Dawn can be reached via email thebeginningnpe@gmail.com

Thank you to Dawn's daughter Olivia Hendrix for creating the newest NPE Stories podcast logo and graphics. Her art can be found @shop_94art on Instagram

Resources Mentioned:

GEDmatch

The Stranger in My Genes by Bill Griffeth

NPE Stories Patreon

NPE Stories facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/NPEstories

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I looked at my matches and I opened and I saw that my little brother was listed as a half sibling.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Hello, you are listening to NPE Stories. This is a podcast where NPEs can share their story. I am your host, Lily, and I found out I was an NPE through an ancestry DNA test that changed my life forever. NPE is a term that stands for not parent-expected or non-paternal event. This means that one or more of our parents are not who we believe them to be. NPE Stories is a podcast where NPEs can share their story of what their original family was like, how they found out they were an NPE, and what their journey has been like since the day they found out. And welcome to episode 236. Today I am speaking with Don, Don M. Hi, Don. Hello. Thank you so much for helping me get a new graphic for the podcast. I just really appreciate you helping make that connection.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

Absolutely. I was so happy to do something for you.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

And it was your daughter. That's so sweet. Olivia Hendricks. She made the current logo, the background. She helped me with a lot of things actually for the podcast. So that was, I just really appreciate everyone that helps helps with this community. So make sure and tell Olivia thank you from me.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

I will. She was very happy to help someone that she knows has helped me through this journey and her going through this journey with me. So she was thrilled when I asked her if she might be able to offer to help you.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

That's so true. The the daughter of the NPE, of course, I I forget that our children are affected by this as well. It's their family truth as well. Exactly. Yes. So, Don, let's go ahead and get into your story today. Let's start with your family of origin. Tell me who was in your raising family, and we'll go from there.

SPEAKER_02 2:17

Okay. So I was born in West Virginia. I am deeply Appalachian, and I grew up a middle child. I was a child of the 70s and 80s, which was a great time to be a kid, I think. My mom and dad stayed married until my mom passed away a few years ago. And we had a great little family, an older sister, younger brother. We moved a lot for different reasons together. We did not have a lot, but we never needed anything. So we did a lot of things together as a family, traveled a lot together, and it was a good childhood. It was a great childhood, actually.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Did you ever have any inkling as a child that you were an NPE?

SPEAKER_02 3:13

I always knew I was different. I always felt out of place in my family. And my sister and I are very close in age, and then my brother quite a bit later. And so my sister and I are so different that even in every school we went to, no one knew we were sisters. I'm very fair and short, petite, and my siblings are very tall. My parents are tall and dark skin. And so I grew differently than my sister. My personality is very different than my siblings. And so there were a lot of times I can particularly remember when I was probably in about sixth or seventh grade asking my mom, why are why am I taller than my sister? Like she was a you know a year and a half older than me. Why am I old? Why am I taller than her? That doesn't make any sense. I said, Am I adopted? I'm pretty sure I'm adopted. And she just said, No, no, that's ridiculous. You're not adopted. Stop asking those kinds of questions. And so, but I think deep down I always kind of felt just like something was off pretty much all the time. I do look like my mother's family, not like my mother necessarily, but like my mother's family. So I think I kind of held on to that as I was growing up.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

So how did you find out you were an NPE?

SPEAKER_02 4:50

My interest started in probably about 2003 with genealogy, like a lot of our stories. And my dad actually grew up not knowing who his father was. He thought he had a name. His dad left when he was really, really little kid. And so he grew up with a single mom in the 50s and 60s. And my dad has worked since he was 14 years old. And so one thing my dad would never talk about was who his dad was. Well, as he got older and we started having kids, he loosened up a little bit. And so one day we just asked him, we said, you know, wouldn't you like to find out who your father was? Because we'd kind of like to know some of our genealogy. And he's like, if you want to research, that's fine, go ahead. Well, this was back in 2003, where there was some research opportunities out there, not a lot, but my mom was actually really interested at the time. She really loved my dad's mother and thought it would be a, you know, just a really nice thing to find out more about my dad's ancestry. So that was kind of the first time that my mom and I ever really connected on something. And that began years and years of she and I doing genealogy and family history together. So in 2006, we found who we thought was my dad's father. He had passed away by then, but we had found that he had left my dad's little family and had moved and had married someone else and started a whole new identity and a whole new family. And so that was sort of intriguing at that point because there were no emotions attached to it. And so we started focusing back on my mom's family. And my mom's family, like I'd said in the beginning, was very deeply Appalachian. Her family was very easy to trace. There were some records, and we started going on just family trips and girl trips with my sister. We went, we would go through cemeteries and go into courthouse vaults and all kinds of things looking for land records and just spending that time together, which was really, really fun because we just really hadn't done a lot of that in the past. And so it was a it was a fun side to my mom. So after we had gotten quite a bit of research out of my mom's family, we we thought as ancestry was coming more, was becoming more accessible, we started thinking about my dad's ancestry. And so we were like, well, I wonder like what his DNA would look like. So I asked my little brother if he would do his Y DNA just to see what we could find out about that. And I remember the very first time I asked my brother about that. I said, Do you think dad would do it? And my mom was like, you know, I don't, I don't know. I don't, I don't know if that's if that stuff is is really real. And which was so unusual because my mother was probably one of the most logical people I'd ever known in my life. She was a lovely, lovely person, but she was not a warm, fuzzy person. She was very logical, very scientifical, very numerical. So I remember thinking that was kind of a funny thing for her to say. But anyway, my brother was like, sure, I will be happy to do it. And so we got his DNA back and got some matches and just kind of set that aside for a while as life gets busy and your kids get busy, you know. So again, we continued to do research trips and do library visits and that type of thing for the next several years. So probably in about 2018, I asked my dad, hey, I have all these matches from my brother. Would you be willing to do a DNA test? And my dad was like, Well, sure, whatever you want to do, it doesn't matter to me. And I'm like, okay. And my mom was kind of hesitant again, but she said, Well, your dad can make his own decisions. So I said, Okay, so we went with it, but I could tell she wasn't happy about it. So in May of that year, 2018, we got my dad's results. And it was kind of interesting because right away a guy reached out to us through email and said that my dad was a match to his girlfriend. And so he was researching her family, and my dad was a match to her, and so was my brother. And I was like, okay, well, that's pretty intriguing. And I'm thinking he's related to this other man, and so I'm completely wrapped up in trying to find out more about my dad's father. So I wanted to know a lot more about what was going on with this family. And I'm I'm working, I'm I've worked as, you know, I've worked in in the area of education for years and years. So I'm only giving this the time that I have to give it, which is like little pockets of time, putting it down, picking it back up. And so I got another email from this same man who was researching his girlfriend's family, and he said, Hey, I just realized that there's another lady that we are matched to, and she is a really close match to your dad. And I'm like, Oh, like how close? And he's like like half sibling close. And I'm like, oh, that's really unusual because my dad didn't have sisters, but also maybe it's one of these other people he started a new family with. And so I thought that that's unusual, but interesting. And so I looked up her match, and she did have enough DNA to be a half-sister. And that is actually, you know, right in 2018 is when people are starting to understand Cenomorgans and DNA. And I did not have a gray grasp on it at that time. So I thought, okay, so there's this lady who matches my dad as a half-sister and she matches my brother. Okay, so I thought, well, what would be a really great idea at this point would be to go ahead and take my own DNA test. And then I could make sure that she was related to my dad. Because then if she matches me and she matches my brother, then we could be sure. So that was my really incredibly great idea to do. So I went ahead and sent for my kit because for some reason I had never done that. And in 2019, November, I ordered my test, and we were traveling for Thanksgiving, I remember, and it was it was to the point already where you were getting like emails when your test results were in, and they would pop up on your phone. And so I remember that I got this email that my test results were in. So I opened my little app and I said, I looked at it and I was like, oh, you know, I don't, I don't know any of those people. Maybe those are some of the same people this guy was talking about. And I'm like, okay, well, I'll just have to look at it later because I didn't really have time to dive into it. But I remember being a little confused. So when we got home after our trip, I looked at my matches and I opened and I saw that my little brother was listed as a half sibling. And I thought, oh, okay, a half sibling. That I don't understand what that means. And then and I didn't see my dad, and then I didn't see this lady that tested as a half sibling to my dad. So immediately when anything happens to me, I go quiet. So I got very quiet, and I I thought, okay, I need to figure this out like right now. So I gathered all of my matches and I uploaded everything to GedMatch where I knew it would make sense once I had everybody's matches and I could see them all at in one place and see the relationships there. And so I did that. I took about three hours and uploaded everything and ran a comparison. And the comparison showed my brother was my dad's full child. This lady was my dad's half-sister, and I did not show up at all. And so I remember the most striking thing to me was when I read the one-to-one comparison with my dad's DNA, it said, no shared DNA segments found. And at the same time, I remember thinking, that makes complete sense. And so my husband walked into the office at that exact minute, and I looked at him and I just started sobbing. Like, and I'm not a crier, I'm not a crier, I'm a stuffer and a keep going kind of girl. And I just started sobbing, and he had no idea why. So I just kept saying, He's not my dad, he's not my dad. How is that true? What happened? And then so that was exactly how I found out. Trying to find my dad's family and his ancestry led to me finding out that my dad was not my dad.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

I'm so sorry that I just can't even imagine that moment. That makes me sad just hearing about that. Yeah. How did you feel in the hours, days after that? What were what were you doing?

SPEAKER_02 15:14

So I remember I remember just feeling shattered, broken was the word I kept feeling. I retreated, like completely inside myself. I know sometimes when people have their discovery, they need to tell everybody and they need to talk about it with anybody. I'm the complete opposite. I was, I don't want to say this out loud. I don't want this to be true. I don't know what to do with this, but I definitely don't want to talk about it. I felt like I couldn't go there because if if I went there, then I couldn't do all the things I needed to do every day. And then if I went there, I was really afraid I might not come back and be the same person. It was almost like a heavy-weighted blanket that I just couldn't get off of me. Because at the same time I was dealing with my dad not being my dad, I'm dealing with my mom never telling me the truth. And in my family, we were a complete family of faith. And I don't mean religion, I mean faith. When we were disciplined, it was out of love, but through faith. When we were talking about who to get married to, it was talks through faith. When it was big decisions in life, we had to look at things through the lens of our faith. So everything that I had been taught and had been instructed on and had had decisions made for me, and the decisions I had made had been through that lens. And so in such a strange way, I had lost my dad, who I love. My dad, he's an amazing man. My identity, obviously, as we talk about, and I had felt like I was losing my faith in the one person who basically, I don't know, in a way, kind of taught me or symbolized my faith because my mother was a very strong person. And all of a sudden, I'm dealing with the fact that my mom kept this from me and lied to me my entire life. And then I thought, does my dad know? Wait, did my dad lie to me my whole life? Or wait, if my dad doesn't know, what do I do about that? So I think all of those thoughts kind of stayed inside of me. And for months I only told my husband, like months and months, except that I did run to my therapist, which I do think saved me from probably a pretty dark depression. The one thing I didn't want to do was I didn't want to be I'm mad at God kind of. I didn't want to have a I'm really mad at God kind of reaction because I was afraid to be even more alone, I think, if that makes sense. Because to me, my faith was real. It wasn't about how I was brought up, it was mine. And so I went to my counselor and I told her the story, and I said, I don't want to be as broken as I feel right now. And she looked at me and she completely validated how shocked and hurt and astounded I was. And that was probably the single most helpful thing that could have happened in that moment because it didn't feel real. Sometimes it still doesn't feel really, I mean, it just feels surreal even six years later, right? So yeah. And so I continued to go to see her for quite a while, just dealing with the feelings that were coming up. It took me quite a while to tell my girls, and the reason I did was because they knew I was withdrawing. But how do you tell your girls that their grandmother kept this secret? I mean, it changed completely how they felt about her, and I hated that for them, and I hated that for my mom. It was just, there were just so many layers to it. I do remember though that the first book I read, I read one book and I listened to one podcast. And the podcast I have listened to, I have not listened to others. I've listened to your podcast. I've gone back and listened to all the past ones. I did not listen to it from the beginning. And I read one book, and the book I read, I don't know if I've ever heard anybody on your podcast refer to it before, but I read The Stranger in My Jeans by Bill Griffith. I don't know how I came across the his book, but I ordered it from Amazon when I heard what it was about, and it was the very first book I read. And I thought, well, like I said, it was the only book I read. And it was about him discovering that his dad was not his dad, and like addressing with his mother, like how she kept that a secret. And I remember just what a relief it was to hear him describe in actual words some of the feelings that I couldn't describe in words, and that was very comforting to me.

SPEAKER_00 21:19

I have to make sure and add that one to the list.

SPEAKER_02 21:22

Yes, I didn't, I don't have heard anybody refer to that one before.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

No, I don't think I have either. Yeah. And then what else? What was your other resource?

SPEAKER_02 21:32

So just the counseling, and then I don't remember when I started listening to your podcast. When did you start your podcast? What year? Oh gosh, I think 2019, maybe April.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

Okay. But didn't did you say you listened to another podcast?

SPEAKER_02 21:48

No, I didn't. I've only ever listened to yours.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

Oh, how did you find this podcast?

SPEAKER_02 21:55

I don't actually even remember, but when I started listening to it. It it you were, I think you were at about episode 50.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

So you probably knew what the term NPE was.

SPEAKER_02 22:09

Yes, and I think it was from his book. Like I it was completely crazy to me. The only other time I remember hearing about this same situation, it was right in that same time period, was when it was the I'm trying to think of the Duck Dynasty brothers, the Phil Robertson, he just passed away. A girl came out, I think it was in about 2019 or 2020, came out and said that he was her biological father. And the brothers had met with her, they had run DNA tests, and she said she didn't want anything from them, but that she knew growing up that she was nothing like her mother, and that Phil Robertson had acknowledged that she was his daughter. And I thought, that's so unusual. So that was the only other NPE situation that I had heard of at that time. I don't even know if they used the term, but that's kind of a side trail right there.

SPEAKER_00 23:14

Yeah, yeah, oh yeah. Okay, so at some point you told your girls how did you start to find out more about how you came to be or what happened?

SPEAKER_02 23:30

Yes, yes. It's kind of sad, but I did not actually reach out to ask my mother until June of 2021. And the only reason I did was because my counselor looked at me one day and she said, Would you regret it if you never took the chance to ask your mom to explain what happened? One of the other things that I haven't mentioned is that in 2000 and back in early 2000s, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. And she went through a lot of treatment and she was healed and then it came back again. So by 2020, she was rediagnosed with the exact same type and going through treatment and doing okay. But I was really afraid after I found this out that if I asked her, then I would be the reason that she would stop doing so well. And I knew as a grown woman adult that that does not make sense. But I struggled with whether or not me finding out that my own truth was more important than putting my mother in that situation. And so that was one of the things that my counselor and I had talked about. And so, and I was going to a faith-based counselor and she said, truth is truth. Like if it's if if your mom has kept this from you out of shame or out of whatever reasons, you still have a right to know your truth. And so, will you regret it if something happens to your mom and you never get the chance to find out who your biological father is or why your mom kept this from you? And so that definitely impacted me. And so right after that, I did email my mom. We were not living close together at the time, and of course, COVID, etc., all of the distance and space between us at that time. So I did email my mom, and I basically just said, I have a question about some of my DNA matches. My I said, my brother's listed as a half-brother, and I have all of these matches from the town where I was born, where you were raised. I'm really confused and a little a little worried about it. And my mother's very short reply was, I will explain when I see you in person. And so that did not happen until October. And so when I saw my mom in October, I had to ask her again. I said, Mom, I need to know. And so she said, Okay. So we did sit and talk one time, and it was probably the strangest thing. It was so odd. My mother said, I've never told this story to anyone. Never. And I mean, I'm, you know, in my 50s at this point. And my mother said, Your dad doesn't know. And I was like, Oh, you kept this from my dad. Like, my dad is sitting inside the house at this point, and we're outside on the porch. She goes, No, and I'm not going to tell him. And that just meant no one's going to tell him, sort of. And I'm like, okay. So my mother just said your dad was in Vietnam, and my best friend was killed in a terrible car accident, which I knew. I knew the story. And she said, I went to the funeral and someone was watching her sister, and I was really, really crushed because it was a pretty violent accident. And so she said, What my mother's boyfriend from high school was there, and he didn't want her to walk home alone. And it was dark and she was very emotional. And so he took her home. And my mother's boyfriend from high school is my biological father. So I said, and she looked at me and she said, I am so sorry. She did apologize to me and she did cry. My mother was not a crier. And I so I said, Thank you for telling me, because I didn't know if it was an assault. And she said, No, she said he was a lovely person. I did love him when we were in high school. And I said, Why didn't you ever tell me? And she goes, Oh, I would never tell anybody. And so I don't think she would have ever told me if I hadn't asked. So I was grateful that I did ask. But as the months went on, she never brought it up again. And I never did either, because she left me with the feeling that that was the only information I was going to get. So I found out at that point that I was 100% Appalachian and that all of my people were from within a hundred square miles of each other. So that was one reason why I guess I love that area so much. And my mother was very proud of that area, very proud of her family. And so I wished that growing up I would have known all of those things. But so that has been a blessing that's come out of that. But my biological father had passed away in 2006. So I never got the chance to meet him, which is sad. But I was glad to know the truth. And I was glad that my counselor pushed me to do that.

SPEAKER_00 29:36

How about the math of the pregnancy? That wasn't did because you said your dad was in Vietnam. Did he come home soon after that funeral?

SPEAKER_02 29:46

He did come home soon after. And I it's kind of one of those things where you reconcile the fact that you're I don't know how I could have never kept a secret for 50 years. My mother and I are very different people. So that's just the way it was for her. And I know I heard, I think it was a lady say on your podcast before, and I thought, oh, that makes so much sense. My dad's name was on my birth certificate in in 1970. So that's who my dad was. And that's how that's kind of what cemented it in her mind, I suppose. I'm like, I wanted to say so many things, like, but look at me, mom. Look at my sister. We didn't look a thing alike ever. Our skin tone, our eye color, our hair color. We do not look like siblings. Like, but she just, I don't know. I don't know how she reconciled that, but I never felt like she loved me different. I never felt like my dad didn't love me. I don't know why my dad didn't ever question it. I don't know. Those were questions I had. Yeah. So right after that, my mom started to get more sick, and I started just kind of uh just kind of like maintaining a relationship with her because she physically needed me to be there. And and that was a bit of a challenge. But in the meantime, kind of a side note that was funny was is a con person contacted my mom, who turned out to be first cousin of hers who had been adopted out that she remembered hearing stories about as a kid. And he was an illegitimate child of her uncle. And my mom was so thrilled to meet him and took two trips to go meet him and was so excited about him and so glad to meet him and know him and talked about him constantly. And she never quite saw the irony in that situation. But so it was just kind of another indication that it was just sort of a I don't know, a closed door. I don't know. I'm not sure how she recognized that or reconciled that.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:09

So not long after that, my mom's her health started to decline within the next year. And so I just decided that I would spend my time just sitting with her and talking with her and loving her. And it was really hard, especially not being able to talk to my dad and feeling really uncomfortable and feeling like I was lying to him every time I was around him because I hadn't done that with my dad. That was not our relationship. And my dad is a giver and a servant and a hard worker, and and my dad deserved to know the truth. I always felt. I returned to a different counselor because my other counselor had moved, and and my new counselor was so helpful because her husband had been adopted, and so he had looked for his birth parents as he became older, and and so she kind of had walked that step, those steps with him, and that was super helpful to have a connection with her on that level. And it was kind of at that time when I realized my counselor had a little unique window into what I was going through that I decided that that kind of was going to be my path forward. So years ago, I had been a counselor and I've been a counselor in a different setting. And so I decided that I was going to look forward and become a counselor in this specific area, wanting to help people in this specific situation. And so that's pretty much what I have focused my time and energy on. My mom passed away three years ago now. And so since then I have been able to focus time and trauma training and some extra coursework and supervision towards getting ready to do that one day. Really? I didn't know. No, I'm excited about, I'm excited about kind of I'm I'm closing down the area of counseling I've been in, and I'm getting ready in the next probably six months to just exclusively work with people like me, and I've been working on my own healing so that I can be the kind of counselor that counselors have been to me. I've been doing EMDR certification and I've gone to trauma training, and and then I went to my first NPE community retreat last fall, which I was terrified to go to and sit around in circles and talk to people about Dawn. And it was so good and lovely and exhausting. Yep. Um, and then also I have also part of my journey has been just my relationship with church. And so obviously, when you grow up around church in church, and then this happens, church is a trigger for you. It's you, I don't know, you just really have to reconcile that. So I go to kind of a group at church that's not on Sundays that's not churchy, and we sit around and talk about things like that. And that's been that was the first time I told my story to a group of people that weren't my family. And so, like I said, my experience has not been to tell lots of people, it's been a very quiet journey. And so I'm excited after my mom, I forgot to mention this. After my mom had been gone a year, so in March of 2024, I told my family, I said, it's time to tell my dad. I have to tell my dad. I have to tell him if I'm I'm avoiding being around him, it's not what's right. And so I sat him and my sister down and I told him it was probably the hardest thing I'd ever done in my life. And I said, Hey, I don't know how to ever tell you this. I would have never told you the first year that mom was gone. But I said, I'm not your daughter, but I am your daughter. I am your kid. And so it was a terrible conversation and a great conversation all at the same time. And my dad looked at me and he said, I don't understand anything you're saying right now, but all I want to know is, are you okay? And that is so my dad. And so I'm so grateful for him. And it's it's it's hard, but and it's it's every day is just hard. And I think those are all the things I think about in helping people with this journey, birthdays and celebrations and losing people, very challenging times, and it just never seems to go away. And I read this in one of my studies was when I was talking about identity, it said, your identity serves as the glue that holds a person's understanding of themselves together across times and situations. Our experiences included having that glue disappear in a matter of seconds while who we thought we were crumpled to the ground. The very definition of trauma, everything changed in a second. Every memory, every piece of advice, story, picture, connection, they all have to be rethought and understood from a different perspective through no fault of our own. And that's why it's so wrong to not tell people, because the glue is what holds our understanding of who we are together. And we miss so much. I missed getting to know my biological father. I did have a chance to meet his brother a year ago. That was also another scary time, but it was a beautiful time. He's a very nice man, and he said, My biological father never had children and probably never knew about me, but would have loved me.

SPEAKER_00 38:26

So really, so your your biological father never had children. Do you know anything more about that? Did he ever marry?

SPEAKER_02 38:38

He did marry, and he took care of stepchildren. And my biological uncle, then, who as soon as my husband and I met him for dinner last May, as soon as I walked into the restaurant, he knew exactly who I was. And I have to tell you, Lily, I've never had that in my life. So that was a beautiful thing, the mirroring that people talk about. That was a beautiful thing. And he said, I can tell exactly that you're one of us. And he's a kind Christian man, beautiful. And he said, My brother was a quiet, witty, caring man who kept to himself. And I was like, I kind of feel like I've met him, you know. That's kind of how I felt.

SPEAKER_00 39:26

Oh, that's sweet. And how about your siblings? Do they know as well now?

SPEAKER_02 39:32

So, yes, I told my sister when I told my dad. My sister is holding that secret to herself, which is fine. I told my brother the next week, and my brother being my brother went, Wow, that explains a lot of things. And he said, Are you okay? And he's the one that calls to check on me. So it's been great. Yeah. So those two things have been great. That part has been fine. Again, it's not something we talk about. They, it's just kind of um an underlying thing. We talk about it, my girls and my sons-in-law. We they talk to me, they check on me, and that's been a good thing. So I think it's important to keep connected. And this podcast alone is something I look forward to. It's something I think about, and I know so many people have said it, and I don't think there are adequate words to talk about how just connected you feel when you listen to people's stories and when we hear your voice.

SPEAKER_00 40:48

Thank you. I that's that's exactly how I feel when I listen to people's stories. It's like, oh, I feel validated. I get it. They get it. Exactly. Thank you so much for deciding to do this work, this therapy work in this field. We need you, Don. You wouldn't believe how many emails I get. Do you know anyone NPE therapist in California, in Utah, in so thank you for dedicating yourself to that. It's really needed.

SPEAKER_02 41:21

I'm excited. I'm excited to start it. Like it just feels like exactly at this point in my life and my career, what I want to do. Something like exactly like what you're doing. I'm gonna learn along the way, and I want it to be impactful, and I don't want to waste a lot of time. I want to get started and start helping people.

SPEAKER_00 41:40

Oh, can I ask what state you're in, or would you prefer I leave that out?

SPEAKER_02 41:44

In Texas right now. So I'll be licensed in Texas, yes.

SPEAKER_00 41:48

Oh, wonderful. Wonderful to hear. Don, if people wanted to contact you, get in touch with you, know more about you, could they do that?

SPEAKER_02 41:59

Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 42:01

What's the best way to get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_02 42:04

So through email, email the beginningnpe at gmail.com.

SPEAKER_00 42:12

And I will put that down below if people want to get in touch with Don. Don, thank you so much for coming on today. I'm just tickled pink that you're going into this field. You are so wanted, and thank you so much for sharing your story with me. I just I really appreciate this, and I appreciate your daughter too.

SPEAKER_02 42:33

Well, we absolutely appreciate you, and thank you for being a part of our healing.

SPEAKER_00 42:39

These stories are here for us to identify with. If you are an NPE and would like to share your story, email npestories at gmail.com. You do not have to give any identifying information. If you are an NPE and would like to share your story, I'd like to hear from you. Subscribe to this podcast to hear more. Come heal with us.

SPEAKER_01 43:03

Okay, are you still in the wrong?